After entering the lower atmosphere of the planet, the Raman accidentally picked up some subspace beings that lived in the lower atmosphere. These lifeforms tried to communicate with the crew of the Raman during the ship's ascent, by directly accessing their thoughts; however, the attempt proved fatal to the Raman's crew.

After determining that the crew of the Raman was dead, CaptainJean-Luc Picard hoped to retrieve the vessel. With the Raman's bridge too heavily damaged, the interface probe was taken into the Raman's auxiliary control room. It was in the auxiliary control room that La Forge discovered what he believed to be an image of his mother, whose ship, the USS Hera, had previously disappeared. This image of his mother, who was actually a subspace being, convinced La Forge to take the Raman to a lower orbit so that it could return to its home.

Upon taking the Raman into a lower orbit, he was able to successfully return the subspace beings to their home; however, in the process, the ship's shields failed, and the ship was destroyed in the planet's atmosphere. (TNG: "Interface")

The Raman was one of the few Federation starships whose interior was visited on screen, but whose class was left unknown.

According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, the Raman was an Oberth-class starship with the registry NCC-59983. This registry contradicts the registry shown (NCC-29487) in the on-screen okudagram, however, it was correctly depicted in the starship list that also appears in the Encyclopedia. It was also stated in the Encyclopedia that the Raman was named after Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, an Indian physicist who was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the molecular scattering of light. (Star Trek Encyclopoedia 3rd ed., p. 399)